Read in this order, not the founder's
Start at the traction slide, then the financials, then the market, then the team. Only after those four do you read the problem and solution slides. By then you already know whether the story is load-bearing.
| Slide | What it must prove | Fail signal |
|---|---|---|
| Traction | Something repeatable is happening | Cumulative-only charts, no cohort view |
| Financials | The model survives its own assumptions | Revenue hockey stick with flat headcount |
| Market | The buyer is countable and reachable | Top-down TAM with a 1% share claim |
| Team | This team specifically can execute this | Advisors listed larger than operators |
The four questions that do most of the work
- What happened in the last 90 days that could not have happened 12 months ago?
- Which single number, if it were half as good, would change the recommendation?
- Who is the buyer, and what were they doing instead last quarter?
- What did the last raise fund, and what did it prove?
Chart tricks worth catching
Cumulative revenue always rises, so it hides churn and flat months. Truncated y-axes turn a 4% improvement into a cliff face. Logo walls conflate pilots with paying customers. None of these are necessarily dishonest, but each one is a place to ask for the underlying series.
Ask for the raw data behind any chart you would cite in a memo. If the raw series is not available, the chart is an assertion, not evidence.
What a good deck earns
A deck cannot win a deal; it can only earn a diligence process. Treat the reading as triage: decide whether the claims are checkable and whether checking them is worth a week. Everything else belongs in the data room.
Part of a guide
Investment due diligence: a complete guide
A complete guide to investment due diligence: the workstreams, the questions investors ask, the red flags that matter, the data room, and how findings become a defensible memo.